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A Blast From the Scottish Past: Demoknighting

iReima (Also known as Craylash on SPUF) is a popular Youtuber most well known for his Demoknighting ability. Every time I try to go up against him as any class I quickly wind up beheaded and staring at that Princess Peach spray of his. His most recent video, How to Play the Hybrid Knight, is a great resource for people hoping to go into demoknighting effectively. Today, he’s agreed to answer some questions about life, liberty, and the pursuit of heads.

1. Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed! First and foremost; What attracted you to the Demoknight subclass in the first place? Why have you decided to main it for all this time?

I believe I saw a few of Lei Lei’s charge courses. She basically scripted a long, continuous script that allowed her to dart left, right and in circles like a damn ballerina. I ended up subscribing to her after seeing her pull off a SPIRAL GRENADE CHARGE, in which she orbits her two targets, colliding and crit slicing one then jumping away with a point blank grenade repel jump. After seeing that I was pretty convinced that demoknight is a viable subclassing.

When I finally got around to asking Lei Lei how she did it, (which is basically her swapping to a controller off her keyboard) In thought that was too much effort to turn, I imagined Lei Lei having three hands or being a really good juggler. Months later, A friend introduced a program to me called Joy-to-Key. I thought it was pretty dope that I could basically program my game pad to mimic my keyboard. I eventually had the brainstorm on porting keyboard commands to the gamepad in lieu of having to have to use one in gameplay. For the longest time I used this. http://s68.photobucket.com/user/ireima/media/sword22.png.html

About 6 months ago, I met NSQuote, and he tailored me a script which emulated most of what I had mocked up on Joy-to-Key, and I stopped using it entirely just to be safe and compliant to Valve’s strict third party program policies.

I enjoyed the class because it felt unique and rare to be such a jack of all trades. Just like the solider. While sacrificing a your core strengths to be agile like a scout. You weren’t a heavy damage dealer anymore. Instead you become a burst skirmisher with high mobility.

2. A lot of people don’t consider the demoknight “a real class”, relegating it to a joke class or an underpowered subclass like trolldier. What’s your opinion on demoknight’s status as a class and his general balance with the rest of TF2?

I believe that there’s two types of knights. Flying Juggernauts and Cannon Fodder. There’s a gross amount of ignorance on the demoknight being useful since the user unfriendly configuration on getting the charges to work your way is either too much work to program for newer players who are trying the class. They end up picking shortcut equips like the Splendid Screen and Persian Persuader, just for the ability to crit from 2 feet. And that’s all they do. The majority of the community has perceived the demoknight as that niche annoyance. And nothing but pitchforks for anyone who try to stem from that, right?

3. Why do you think Valve gave all this knight stuff to the Demoman in the first place, instead of some other class?

The Demo lost the Soldier/Demo war, but I believe the knight theme might have been pushed on the demo for his Scottish heritage.

4. Call me weird, but I find that the bottle can really hold its own as a demoknight melee, especially on random crit servers. What’s your opinion on bottleknights/demopans?

I really have no opinion on the bottle or the pan. I’m gonna take some heat for this one.

Picture by hawkshadow741.

5. How long does it usually take to release a new video? What process do you usually go through from initial idea to final product?

Oh man. Well for one, I only play on servers with replay enabled. I play for about a month or two, rack up a couple hundred replays. I dedicate a lot of hours on the weekend to rooting through the footage, trimming the fat, lining up third person camera angles and slow motion shots-

Then I just FRAPS it. It’s such a stupid simple process that I feel so ashamed that my videos are made through such half-assed procedures. It’s pretty efficient since you get to isolate your desired scenes. But still ghetto as hell.

6. What’s your opinion on the various scripts that allow demoknights to bypass the turning restrictions Valve put in place? Do you think these turning abilities should be added to the basic mechanics of the shield so all players could use them?

In my opinion turning should be the default. NSQuote/Veloxedium’s script is triggered when they hold M2 down. I think Valve should program a type of toggleable inverted joystick that creates a point when you right click, then depending on how hard you move your mouse left or right from that designated point, you will turn accordingly. Either that or Valve Devs should just put the booties on in a Multiply stat x10 server. The booties strangely work in those servers.

Honestly, they should just make the booties into some kinda berserker aid, with hp regen or bullet resistance.

I can’t say I feel a little dirty that turning isn’t the default. But the booties don’t even provide 100% turning from it’s release date. What is the public going to do but innovate themselves? Whats the point of a console and scripts if we are ostracized for using it?

7. Anything else you’d like to add about demoknighting, Youtube, SPUF, TF2, the Land Before Time, etc?

Flight simulator joysticks do not work on demoknight, there’s no d-pad.